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Is Brueggemann Really a Pluralist?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Jon D. Levenson
Jon D. Levenson
Affiliation:
Harvard Divinity School
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Extract

One characteristic of Walter Brueggemann's recently published Theology of the Old Testament that distinguishes it from comparable studies is its author's explicit commitment to hermeneutical pluralism. Whereas the classic works of biblical theology located the enterprise within a univocally Christian framework, Brueggemann's massive and learned volume proposes a “contextual shift from hegemonic interpretation … toward a pluralistic interpretive context.” The transition is not an option but a necessity in a postmodern situation marked by “the disestablishment of the triumphalist church in the West” and the loss of “a consensus authority.” “No interpretive institution,” he writes, “ecclesial or academic, can any longer sustain a hegemonic mode of interpretation, so that our capacity for a magisterial or even a broadly based consensus about a pattern of interpretation will be hard to come by.” For Brueggemann, this loss is a gain, since “the [biblical] texts themselves witness to a plurality of testimonies concerning God and Israel's life with God.” The disintegration of consensus goes hand in hand with “the parallel disestablishment of the institutional vehicles of such interpretation” that have repressed awareness of the rich internal diversity of the Old Testament. In the absence of a hegemonic consensus, enforced by repressive and discriminatory institutions, “the testimony of Israel” will be able to recover its character “as a subversive protest and as an alternative act of vision that invites criticism and transformation.” For Brueggemann, the repressiveness and discrimination of the institutions is reflected in the dominance of the white males within them. In a situation of more diversity of race and gender, he repeatedly tells us, valid alternative visions will blossom.

Type
Research Articles
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 93 , Issue 3 , July 2000 , pp. 265 - 294
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2000

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References

1 Brueggemann, Walter, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997) 710Google Scholar. Henceforth, this book will be abbreviated TOT.

2 Ibid., 709-10.

3 Ibid., 710.

4 Ibid., 707.

5 Ibid., 713.

6 Among many examples, see Ibid., 89.

7 Barr, James, The Concept of Biblical Theology: An Old Testament Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999) 561Google Scholar.

8 TOT, 712.

9 Already on the first page of his book, Brueggemann announces that “I write and exposit as a Christian interpreter,” but one who is “acutely aware of and concerned about the destruc-tiveness implicit in every form of supersessionism.” TOT, 1, n.l.

10 Ibid., 715.

11 Ibid., 740, n. 39. Brueggemann gives the reference for Derrida's comment as Derida, Jaques, “Force of Law: The ‘Mythical Foundation of Authority,’” Cadoo Law Review 11 (1990) 919–1045Google Scholar, but cites it from Caputo, John D., Demythologizing Heidegger (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993) 193Google Scholar.

12 Ibid., 740.

13 Ibid., 707.

14 Ibid., 718-20.

15 See, for example, Ibid., 89, 713.

16 Barr, (The Concept of Biblical Theology, 549) points out “a certain selectiveness in [Brueggemann's] perception of ideology,” which “is applied to matters of royalty and temple, but not to the Ten Commandments [TOT, 183-86] or to practices like the jubilee year, which is a ‘wise and cunning provision’ and a ‘radical vision’ [TOT, 189-90], but is not described as ideology.”Google Scholar

17 See Berger, Peter L., A Kumar of Angels (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969), 31–53Google Scholar. It is one thing to say that social factors have reduced or eliminated our awareness of certain valuable interpretations (a liberal view). It is quite another thing to say that social factors exhaustively explain and thus help deconstruct certain interpretations (a radical view). Though Brueggemann leaves it unclear which of these two very different positions he is taking, he gives the impression that he is closer to the latter, more radical view.

18 Brueggemann's passionate emphasis on justice, especially social justice, skirts the critical fact that many kinds of arrangements that he and his readers find highly oppressive go totally without critique in the Hebrew Bible, including the prophets. The idea that one can cite the biblical demands for justice and then fill the word in with content from one's own personal values is highly problematic as a mode of application of biblical teaching. The dubious notion that justice is “indeconstructible” serves to disguise the problem posed by the diversity and plurality of ideas of justice in all periods, our own certainly included.

19 Ibid., 733. The sentence is, of course, incoherent in a benign way, since the Jewish tradition does not speak of an “Old Testament” but of the Tanakh or Miqra'. On this whole terminological problem, see Levenson, Jon D., The Hebrew Bible, The Old Testament, and Historical Criticism: Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), esp. chaps. 1-2Google Scholar. (Henceforth, this book will be abbreviated HBOTHC, In this essay, for purposes of simplicity I shall generally follow Bueggemann's usage, but occasionally add the term Tanakh where the context would seem to require it.

20 TOT, 734.

21 Ibid., 735 (Brueggemann's emphasis).

22 Ibid., 108 (Bueggemann's emphasis).

23 For a development of this distinction, see the fine article by Batnitzky, Leora, “Dialogue as Judgment, Not Mutual Affirmation: A New Look at Franz Rosenzweig's Dialogical Philosophy,” JR 79 (1999) 523–44Google Scholar.

24 TOT, 90.

25 Ibid., 91.

26 Childs, Brevard S., Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992)Google Scholar.

27 TOT, 92.

28 Ibid., 91.

29 Childs, , Biblical Theology, 71Google Scholar. See also Childs's own rebuttal to Brueggemann on pp. 72-73.

30 TOT, 90.

31 HBOTHC, 80.

32 Childs, , Biblical Theology, 71Google Scholar. See also his Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979) 211-13, 221–24Google Scholar.

33 TOT, 91, n. 82.

34 Childs, Brevard S., Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985) 9Google Scholar.

35 Childs, , Introduction, 97Google Scholar.

36 Ibid., 99.

37 There is room to wish that Childs were more cognizant of the Enlightenment influence on his thinking and appreciative of it. Although Barr may overstate the issue, his critique on this point (The Concept of Biblical Theology, 432-33) has value.

38 TOT, 91.

39 Ironically, Barr, (The Concept of Biblical Theology, 545)Google Scholar notes that in TOT “[h]istorical criticism is almost entirely neglected, and almost all mentions of it are entirely negative.” On the dangers to biblical theology inherent in Brueggemann's view of historical criticism, see the fine review by Hanson, Paul D., “A New Challenge to Biblical Theology,” JAAR 67 (1999) 447–59Google Scholar.

40 TOT, 91.

41 Carmy, Shalom, “A Room with a View, But a Room of Our Own,” Tradition 28 (1994) 41Google Scholar.

42 See Simon, Uriel, “The Religious Significance of the Peshat” Tradition 23 (1988) 41–63Google Scholar. These are problems of which Childs is keenly aware, in a way that is almost unparalleled among contemporary Protestant scholars. See Childs, Brevard S., “The Sensus Literalis of Scripture: An Ancient and Modern Problem,” in Donner, Herbert et al,, eds., Beiträge zur alttestamentlichen Theologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977) 80–93Google Scholar.

43 TOT, 91. The reference is to Childs, Brevard S., The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974)Google Scholar.

44 Oakes, Edward T., “Pascal: The First Modern Christian,” First Things 95 (08/09, 1995) 45Google Scholar.

45 TOT, 93.

46 Childs, Brevard S., Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1970) 99Google Scholar.

47 Biblical scholars who make no act of faith in the traditional religious sense, however, still must employ presuppositions, and the presupposition that defines the corpus that they identify as the “Bible” will necessarily constitute an act of deference to one traditional religious community or another. Historical criticism is powerless to tell us which body of literature is biblical. At most, it can only describe a range of compositions that various communities have judged to be canonical, leaving open the key question of which of these (and in which order) comprise the “Bible.” On the relationship of historical criticism to traditional affirmations, see HBOTHC, esp. pp. 106-26.

48 See Childs, Bevard S., “Does the Old Testament Witness to Jesus Christ,” in Adna, Jostein et al., eds., Evangelium, Schritauslegung, Kirche: Festschrift fur Peter Stuhlmacher (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1977) 57–64Google Scholar.

49 TOT, 94. Brueggemann erroneously attributes this last point to my “following the eight interpretive rules of Moses Maimonides.” He is actually referring to my use of the eighth of Maimonides' thirteen principles of Judaism. See HBOTHC, 62-81.

50 TOT 94 Actually, my agreement with Childs may be more restricted than Brueggemann recognizes. Childs's conception of canon strikes me as a contemporary reformulation of the Reformation notion of scripture as self-interpreting (interpres sui ipsìus). My own emphasis in these discussions tends, instead, to fall on the interaction of scripture with other aspects of religious tradition and thus obviously grows out of Jewish doctrines of the twofold Torah, the Written and the Oral. I would stress more than he the inevitability of interpreters' standing within communities and simultaneously challenging and deferring to the modes of authority of their traditions. That Childs does not elaborate a theology for communities other than his own is understandable and laudable, but there is still room to wish that he gave more recognition to the distinctly Protestant character of his proposal. On this, see HBOTHC, 172, n. 39.

51 Ibid., 95. Given Brueggemann's deference to postmodernist hermeneutics, it is odd to see him implying the existence of a reading that is not “vested.” What is it, and where does one find it?

52 Murphy, Roland E., “Reflections on a Critical Biblical Theology,” in Sun, H. T. C. et al., eds., Problems in Biblical Theology: Essays in Honor of Rolf Knierim (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997) 271–73Google Scholar. Barr, James (The Concept of Biblical Theology, 299)Google Scholar is more extreme and twice as wrong. He thinks I am trying “to destroy both historical criticism and biblical theology at the same time.”

53 Hence my conclusion to chap. 4 of HBOTHC (p. 105): “Bracketing tradition has its value, but also its limitations. Though fundamentalists will not see the value, nor historicists the limitations, intellectual integrity and spiritual vitality in this new situation demand the careful affirmation of both.”

54 HBOTHC, 79. The quote from Mays is found in Mays, James L., “Historical and Canonical: Recent Discussion about the Old Testament and Christian Faith,” in Cross, Frank Moore et al., eds., Magnolia Dei: The Mighty Acts of God: Essays on the Bible and Archaeology in Memory of G. Ernest Wright (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976) 524Google Scholar.

55 HBOTHC, 81.

56 Ibid., 80-81.

57 HBOTHC, 88. Kugels comments are in Kugel, James L., “Biblical Studies and Jewish Studies,” Association for Jewish Studies Newsletter 36 (Fall, 1986) 22Google Scholar.

58 HBOTHC, 29-30.

59 TOT, 95.

60 Ibid.

61 Murphy, Roland E., “Old Testament/Tanafcw—Canon and Interpretation,” in Brooks, Roger and Collins, John J., eds., Hebrew Bible or Old Testament? Studying the Bible in Judaism and Christianity (Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity 5; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990) 24Google Scholar. Ironically, this is the same volume in which my words quoted above in n. 53 first appeared. The volume resulted from a conference at the University of Notre Dame in 1989 that Murphy and I both attended.

62 HBOTHC, 81.

63 Murphy is also in error when he writes that I “cannot agree with N. Sarna's attempt to interpret the Torah in the light of modern historical criticism.” ( Murphy, , “Reflections,” 272Google Scholar). My actual disagreement with Sarna is over the degree of continuity between medieval Jewish plain sense exegesis (pashtanut) and modern historical criticism. See HBOTHC, 66—70.

64 TOT, 95. Note the unspoken assumption: a Jewish reading is too cramped to deal adequately with the division of humanity into nations and with the grandness of creation!

65 Murphy, , “Old Testament/Tanakh,” 28Google Scholar.

66 It is one thing to say that historical criticism enables us to obtain a purchase on the text that is at odds with traditional Jewish and Christian understandings and with the first impressions of moderns of whatever sort when they read the text. With this, I have always been in hearty agreement. The claim that this historical-critical purchase is normative and sovereign, however, is not historical, but theological in character, and cannot be advanced without the invocation of authority structures of some kind or another. The invocation of “the text itself is most at home in Protestantism and cannot serve as the basis for a wide-ranging pluralism on issues of normative theology.

67 Levenson, Jon D., The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993) 232Google Scholar. Brueggemann (TOT, 94, n. 89) understands me to be saying in that volume that “the notion of a father giving his beloved son is a pervasive one [that] the church has … turned … against the Jews in a polemical, exclusivist way.” This is certainly true, but I also connect this same notion with ideas of chosenness in both the Tanakh and in rabbinic midrash. That is why my last text is a Tannaitic midrash that is a parallel to the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen and whose point is “to justify the preference for the latecomers at the expense of those whom they dispossess” ( Levenson, , Death and Resurrection, 230–31Google Scholar). Because the supersessions are internal to the common scriptural legacy of the Jews and the church, appeal to the common legacy does not overcome the supersessionism, even if it mitigates it.

68 TOT, 94.

69 Ibid., 651-54.

70 Ibid., 109.

71 Ibid., 449. In this latter comment, Brueggemann is endorsing Rosenzweig's understanding. See his n. 73. But see also the extremely important qualification developed by Batnitzky (see n. 23, above).

72 Ibid., 745.

73 Ibid., 459.

74 Ibid., 77.

75 Ibid., 599.

76 Ibid., 690.

77 Ibid., 710, 712.

78 See n. 71, above.

79 Ibid., 108 (Bruggemann's emphasis).

80 See Brueggemann's, theological and moral reflections in his insightful volume, The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith (OBT; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977)Google Scholar.

81 Ibid., 107. See his discussion on 107-12.

82 Ibid., 83 (Brueggemann's emphasis).

83 See Ibid., 110-11.

84 Ibid., III. Bueggemann even goes so far as to refer to the theory of John Murray Cuddihy that, in Brueggemann's words (p. 724, n. 10), “Freudian slips are a peculiarly Jewish phenomenon when suppressed Jewishness will out. On such a notion, I suggest that the Bible is full of such 'slips,' especially on the lips of [YHWH].” The ahistorical, essentialist assumption of this observation would be breathtaking even if it did not come from the pen of a scholar who expresses sympathy for postmodernism. Cuddihy's fascinating book ( The Ordeal of Civility: Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss, and the Jewish Struggle with Modernity [Boston: Basic Books, 1974]Google Scholar) is about the impact of emancipation and modernization on certain nineteenth- and twentieth-century Jewish intellectuals, among whose number YHWH is not usually listed.

85 See HBOTHC, 10-15.

86 I thank my colleague, Professor Gary A. Anderson, for reminding me of this.

87 TOT, 424 (Brueggemann's emphasis).

88 Professor Joel S. Kaminsky points out to me that Prov 17:5 and 19:17 come close to the equation of the two loves. Note, however, that love is not mentioned in either verse, nor is covenant (which is the context of Brueggemann's remark). It seems to me that the first verse is connected with notions of humanity as created in the image of God (compare Gen 1:26-28 and 9:6), and the second, with notions that God rewards the charitable (compare Deut 15:10). I would still call this relating, rather than equating, the service of God and the treatment of one's fellow.

89 See, for example, m.Yoma 8:9.

90 TOT, 196. I thank Professor Joel S. Kaminsky for drawing my attention to the problematics of Brueggemann's handling of the matter of purity.

91 But Bueggemann's pluralism does not seem to extend to Christians committed to continuing the Old Testament notions of purity, which he sees as “definitively and irreversibly” superseded in the church.

92 Childs, , “Does the Old Testament,” 64Google Scholar.

93 TOT, 94.